15/07/2014

The success of BRCK shows Kenya's hidden potential.

BRCK, a kind of modem that can be used in rural areas, finally managed
to raise 1.2 million dollars(100 million shillings) in series A
venture capital capital funding. This goes to show the potential of
the Kenyan tech sector. Brck had managed to raise about 170,000
dollars from the fundraising website Kickstarter. Brck's main niche is
to provide internet in areas where the traditional networks would find
it too expensive and uneconomical to lay out an internet network. The
founders of Brck, Eric Hersman- the CEO for the BRCK project, Julianna
Rotich, among others were instrumental in the creation of the Ihub
incubation hub as well as the disaster monitoring site ushahidi, which
which mapped out disasters such as the Haiti earthquake. If the
fundraising by Brck is anything to go by, then the Kenyan tech scene
will have started taking those baby steps to making Kenya a Silicon
Savannah, and perhaps, spread those fruits much wider.